The stretch of Interstate 70 that passes through the Colorado Rocky Mountains is notorious for heavy traffic as skiers head to and from the state’s world-class ski resorts each weekend during the winter season. But when Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend coincided with ceaseless winter storms that brought snowfall to the mountains for days on end, many skiers spent more time seeing red than they did getting to shred.

Despite warnings of “difficult to impossible” driving conditions and inevitable road closures due to forecasted blizzard-like winds and snowfall, determined drivers took to the roads all weekend long.

Arvada resident Kirsten Kent is one of many who battled hours of snarled traffic in search of fresh powder. With friends in town for the holiday weekend, Kent hit I-70 on Sunday morning to drive to Breckenridge Ski Resort.

“Normally things will be slow. It’s taken 2.5 hours to get up there before,” Kent said. “This is definitely a new record. Close to eight total hours of travel time… I really only got two hours of ski-time in because of the traffic.”

After getting a late start around 10 a.m., it took Kent and her friends about three hours to drive to Breckenridge Ski Resort. But the drive home took even longer, almost 5 hours, after standstill traffic at the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial tunnels, she said.

For hours, Kent said she and her friends sang Katie Perry songs and threw snowballs before finally making it through the tunnels. All up and down I-70, the group passed vehicles that slid off the road or otherwise couldn’t get enough traction to continue.

“Basically anyone who had a sedan was not making it,” Kent said. “Everyone else who had an SUV or truck seemed to be doing okay.”

Charlie Stubblefield, the owner of Mountain Recovery, one of the largest towing companies that operates on the I-70 mountain corridor, estimated that in a 72-hour stretch over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend his company responded to 450 incidents.

Stubblefield described a “parking lot of traffic” as he and six tow trucks attempted to drive from Silverthorne up to the I-70 tunnels on Sunday. On the way to the main incident, the team ended up towing several other vehicles out of their way for free, Stubblefield said.

“Boy, the traffic is unbelievable for this holiday weekend, and we’re fighting,” Stubblefield said Monday afternoon as snow continued to fall. “And it’s a hard one to get places. It’s easy to clear the incidents once we’re there. Getting there is a whole ‘nother story.”

Colorado State Patrol Trooper Gabriel Moltrer reported that by noon on Monday state troopers had already conducted 50 motorist assists on I-70 between Vail Pass and the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels. Those assists included helping vehicles that slid off the road or spun out, Moltrer said, noting there were also 5 crashes in that timespan.

Saturday on I-70 wasn’t much different, Moltrer said. Even as wind gusts over 100 mph led ski resorts to restrict lift access, the Colorado State Patrol reportedly responded to 10 crashes Saturday between Vail Pass and the tunnels.

Even travelers who hit the road early Friday morning couldn’t escape the icy road conditions.

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Around 9 a.m. that first day of the snowstorm, Stubblefield said he came across a Toyota 4Runner that crashed and rolled twice before landing on its side in the leftmost lane on westbound I-70.

The two occupants, who had driven to the mountains to ski, were hanging by their seatbelts but not badly injured, Stubblefield said. So, he climbed up on the side of the car, opened the door and helped extricate them from the vehicle before carrying one of the occupants who had somehow lost their shoes to his truck.

“It’s a lot of risk to go skiing for sure,” Stubblefield said. “My takeaway was that it was a perfect scene. It sucks that they rolled but they could have been hit by another vehicle. We got them out. Got their vehicle off the road. It just went so textbook perfectly for how we train with CDOT.”

The holiday weekend also included an avalanche that buried 10 vehicles on Berthoud Pass, high winds that closed ski lifts and knocked trees across roadways and into houses in Blue River, semis that jackknifed on mountain passes and constant road closures.

While almost every traveler faced delays, those who did eventually make it to the ski resorts were rewarded with feet of fresh snow. Kent said that as she and her friends skied Sunday at Breckenridge for two short hours, the snow kept falling, resulting in soft turns with every run.

“I set out to have some fun and got to hang out with friends,” Kent said. “I don’t think that time spent outside is ever wasted. So I would say it was worth it in the end.”